Miami Street Photography Festival - Part 2
Domino Park in Little Havana,
Last week I wrote about the activities that I participated in at the Miami Street Photography Festival that was held December 5 -8 at the HistoryMiami Museum. I missed doing some things, in part, because the workshop I took overlapped with the festival events.
Photo by Susan Schiffer. Used with permission. I got to experience Little Havana. Almost all of us took pictures at Domino Park. Susan’s was certainly a standout. You can see her Instagram gallery at @susan.schiffer.
What I missed.
I missed both photo-walks. I mentioned in the workshop blog that in the last two days of the workshop I was more or less in crisis mode trying to get my five slides together for presentation. Perhaps I did not couch it as a crisis. It was a crisis. I am really sorry I missed the photo-walk opportunities because my hope for 2020 is to do some free photo-walks in Nashville. It would have been nice to learn how to do that.
I also missed a couple of gallery tours. There were seven exhibitions with more than 200 photographs displayed. It was nice just to walk around. It would have been great to have a guide.
I missed the Leica camera loan opportunity. Oddly, I have been considering whether I should move to a Leica. It is a much better camera for street photography, but not necessarily better for travel photography. I had the time to tryout the Leica, but I did not have the creative or technical “bandwidth” at that point in the week. I took that as a sign that my Olympus can serve me well for another year.
As always, I was in the bottom 10% in being social and networking. Sometimes I do better the second time around. Maybe next year?
Photo by Carlos Antonorsi. Used with permission. I also got to go Wynwood Walls. You can see the opportunity this place offers in this photo taken by Carlos, who is a Miami street photographer. You can see his Instagram gallery at @c.antonorsi.
What I will never forget.
Sometimes when I have a big panorama experience in my life, like this Street Photography festival, what I remember best are the little one-off moments or experiences. That was the case this time.
Let me just say that I will never forget the exhibition of the work by Nikos Economopoulos. It included some of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen. I have a new appreciation that digital images just cannot do justice to photographs like prints can.
One just-for-fun activity that I watched was the street photo slam. Twenty images were solicited from the Internet to be critiqued by none other Nikos Economopoulos, Matt Weber, and Gulnara Samoilova. Each of the three on the panel verbally critiqued the photo up for review for about two minutes and then they rated it with a show of a card that had a number from 1 to 5 on it. It was interesting to see their critique style and what was important to them. What was dear was that, at the beginning, Matt took his card that had a “1” and put it in the floor. He was not going to be that harsh of a critic. Thank you, Matt from someone who puts their pictures up for critique. The panel was viewing the images on two monitors. There was a fair amount of spirited and silly discussion about how different the pictures looked on the two monitors. Out of one of those exchanges I came to understand Gulnara could hold her own. I guess that is not surprising.
The last day of the workshop I was eating a late lunch at a very small Lebanese restaurant near the HistoryMiami Museum. I had eaten there the day before and had gotten to know the fellow who was doing the cooking. He and I just clicked. I may not be so great at social networking, but I can be a “house a fire” one on one. Nikos and Gulnara walked in. They sat at a table next to mine. All tables were next to mine, it was that small. For awhile it was just my friend, the cook, and two of the world’s greatest contemporary photographers and me. I won’t forget that!
Photo by Craig Hansen. Used with permission. The first day of shooting at the workshop was in Hollywood Beach, so I got to see Hollywood Beach. This picture without the bicycle in the upper right was good. The bicycle in the upper right made it great.
Exercise
All of the photos I presented in this blog and last week’s blog and the blog on the workshop taken by students in the MSPF workshops are classic candid street photographs. The pictures are characterized by good separation of subjects, good layering, surprise points of interest, interesting light and shadows. Look through your images. Do you have any candid photos like that?